To get the map round the right way and bring back under one roof various streams of my writing.

Wednesday, March 29, 2017

The third octopus

Elle Hunt, in The Guardian 29 March 2017 has written an inspiring review of a book by Peter Godfrey-Smith, Other Minds, a reflection on the intelligence of cephalopods: the squids, cuttlefish, octopuses etc.

A 1959 paper detailed an attempt at the Naples Zoological Station to teach three octopuses to pull and release a lever in exchange for food. Albert and Bertram performed in a “reasonably consistent” manner, but one named Charles tried to drag a light suspended above the water into the tank; squirted water at anyone who approached; and prematurely ended the experiment when he broke the lever.

Without wanting to get above my station, I claim connection to that third octopus. I have never been a successful joiner of a movement, or mob leader in rebellion, but I tend not to fit. I have never met a multiple choice test in which there were answers I felt happy to tick. Charles is a wonderful model independent thinker, a cephalophoric cephalopod, breaking moulds of thought and discipline, reluctant to fit for fools. I cannot match his vigour, but then he (she?) had so much brain in limbs. And thus far I have not been kept under lights in a rectangular tank. I do not regard this state (at least for me, I hesitate to speak for the Neapolitan Charles) as a conscious choice matter. My mind has over time increasingly found itself unable to be herded.

I am reminded in this moment of the first time I sought to drive a small flock of goats, imagining them sheep. You gently come behind the goats and with sweet words encourage them forward. Then in a moment there you are, alone, just a hillside in front of you. You turn around and the staring gathered goats say: "Yes?"

this (in 2017) is a new blog...

The word 'cephalophoria' suggested itself to me, is my own invention, as meaning "love of free mindedness". St Denis, my name saint who apparently could not spell, probably a common enough thing in the third century CE, was a cepalophore. That is a member of a small group of christian saints who somewhat prior to the manner of M Python, carried on doing what they were doing after their heads were cut off. Much impressing ladies for a bit, see here and below, St Denis on the wall of Notre Dame de Paris heading out of town after an encounter with the unwilling.

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I have worked through a number of blogs since 2000. I have had some eight domain names registered for different projects, of which only 'A Place of Info' remains. It resides in a storage space at ipower.com, on an internet superhighway in the USA. That storage space contains legacy folders of such projects previously 'live' with their own domain names. Here are two of them:

St Denis de Paris

A case of severe independent-mindedness - a cephalophore - heading out of Paris still preaching to closely admiring women, after an encounter with the unwilling circa 250CE. (image borrowed from Cool Stuff in Paris of Manning Leonard Krull, click on photo.)